Milestone gates
Progress is gated, not assumed
Milestone gates are blocking checkpoints. A failed gate pauses new content until the learner completes a targeted remediation plan and submits the missing evidence.
| Gate | Week | Passing criteria | Remediation path |
|---|---|---|---|
| G1 | 6 | Course repo · weekly tracker · Dockerized service · diagnostic report | Remediate orientation and systems setup |
| G2 | 18 | Explain eigenvalues, SVD, norms, condition numbers; implement basic numerical routines | Remediate linear/numerical algebra |
| G3 | 30 | Derive basic gradients; explain MLE/MAP; implement hypothesis tests + bootstrap CIs; explain power/MDE | Remediate calculus/statistics; publish Foundations release |
| G4 | 45 | Completed all engineering primitives (retrieval, rate limiting, caching, chunking, PII, metrics, resilience, sketches, routing) | Remediate the missing primitive contracts/tests |
| G5 | 57 | Completed system design case studies with requirements, API, data model, scaling, trade-offs, failure modes | Remediate the weakest design pattern |
| G6 | 69 | A/B analysis tool, bootstrap tool, SRM detector, feature flag engine, experiment assignment, monitoring plan | Remediate experimentation/MLOps; publish Engineering + Systems release |
| G7 | 81 | RAG retrieval pipeline, retrieval evaluation report, prompt system, memory system, agent prototype | Remediate the weakest LLM/RAG component |
| G8 | 93 | Deployed vLLM or SGLang, benchmark methodology, observability dashboard, quantization report, speculative decoding report, inference cost model | Remediate inference benchmarking and operations |
| G9 | 102 | Working production AI platform: router, quotas, tracing, logging, idempotency, work queue, model registry, cost attribution, safety filters | Remediate the missing platform capability |
| G10 | 108 | Completed capstone, published portfolio, passed mock interviews, behavioral stories, 30-day job-search plan | Remediate the specific capstone/interview gap |
Portfolio releases
Three evidence-backed checkpoints
W1–30Foundations
Math, numerical routines, and experimentation toolkit
badge verified · Week 30
W31–69Engineering + Systems
Tested primitives, system designs, MLOps tools, and postmortem
badge verified · Week 69
W70–108LLM Platform
LLM/RAG work, inference benchmark, platform layer, and capstone
badge verified · Week 108
Completion is evidence-based, not attendance-based
At every level, completion means evidence exists: code, a benchmark or result, a design/technical explanation, and a retrospective. Optional depth work raises the ceiling but is never required for the core checkpoint.